


problem child

by spacetimeenigma



Category: Naruto
Genre: Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Depression, Failed NaNoWriMo, Fluff and Angst, Fuck the Naruto Timeline, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Muteness, NaNoWriMo, Not Beta Read, OC insert, SI OC - Freeform, Self-Insert, all the action and thrills of childcare reform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-02-18 07:42:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21507598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacetimeenigma/pseuds/spacetimeenigma
Summary: There's a reason the genius ninja don't come from the Konoha Orphanage.Kura may not have completed her past life's social work and psychology education, but she knew enough about child development to know that an orphanage was never a good place for a kid. Throw in semi-legal underground child army 'recruiting', child experimentation, poverty, and a good few underpaid, under-trained caretakers, and, well.This just won't do.Someone has to do something.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi & Maito Gai, Original Female Character & Everyone, Original Female Character & Hatake Kakashi, Original Female Character & Maito Gai, Original Female Character & Tsunade
Comments: 56
Kudos: 627
Collections: A Collection of Beloved Inserts





	1. Kura

**Author's Note:**

> So, this work came about during my developmental psychology unit for university, in which we learned about all the horrrible horrible effects of institutional care (i.e. orphanages) ofc being the nerd I am I immediately went 'wow so all those Konoha orphans would be real messed up, huh.' and proceeded to research the heck out of it. I've got two more chapters finished following this one but after that? ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ 
> 
> There's a lot of things I would have preferred to make clearer in this first draft and I had a vague plan to leave actual sources and footnotes for some of the developmental psych stuff but alas i am too busy putting footnotes in my actual assignments/essays. maybe on another day? For now the some of the sources are in the end notes.
> 
> A few other notes; world building in this fic is HEAVILY based on Silver Queen's Dreaming of Sunshine bc.... its just very good, okay???? 
> 
> I have not had personal experience with out of home care myself (foster care, group homes, orphanages, etc.) so a lot of this stuff is based on research and extrapolation on said research. Some of this stuff might not be super accurate to lived experience. Some of it might even be offensive. If you have lived experience and want to correct me on stuff, please do! 
> 
> if you want to correct me on naruto canon tho..... good luck lmao.

_What do I know?_ I thought to myself in the calmest way I could. I could hear screaming from the crib/cage next to me where Miyako was. She was a recent arrival in this place - that I suspected was the infant room of an overcrowded orphanage.

_I know my new name is Kura._

I knew this because that’s what one of my caregivers screamed at me after I woke up screaming late one night. The rest of the children had proceeded to wake up, so she had thrown her arms in the air and left us all to our screaming and filth and boredom.

_I know I am a child, but I don’t know how young._ I struggled to wriggle my way over to the side of my crib that was closest to Miyako and stuck my tiny hand through the bars. I patted her head, clumsily, but she kept on screaming.

_I know that the language spoken in this place is Japanese._ Once, I had learned Japanese, in a life that seemed incredibly far away now. I had considered myself to be good for a non-native speaker, but nowhere near fluent.

_I know I live in an orphanage._ Miyako had grabbed onto my hand and was sucking on my thumb. I was sure she was hungry, but no one was free to feed her yet. Or maybe she was teething. I didn’t know much about children, despite being a child myself. It was an irony I couldn’t bring myself to laugh at.

_I know this place is freakishly similar to a show I watched as a preteen._ At the thought, I allowed myself a whimper, which turned into a splutter and cough, then a sob. I clapped my unoccupied hand over my face and nose, but it didn’t help. The cries kept coming, from both of us this time.

_I know I have to get out of here._

* * *

By the time I was four, I knew how to make it in this place. I occupied myself by playing caregiver to the younger kids, spending a lot of time in the infant room I had hated so viciously as a baby.

I knew what would happen if I didn’t.

I averted my eyes from the kids who were rocking back and forth against the walls of the orphanage hallways. I closed my ears to the screaming of the older orphans. I couldn’t help. I was too small.

Miyako had vanished about a year ago and wasn’t mentioned again. This happened to the kids here sometimes. I didn’t know why, but I suspected that recruitment into underground military operations started early in Konoha.

Or maybe she had just died. _God knows this place isn’t good for kids._

There was nowhere to sit in the infants’ room. My wobbly legs got tired from standing over the cots, holding the hands of babies in there, stroking their cheeks to watch them turn on reflex for a bottle that wasn’t there. I never had food. All I could offer was my soft voice, whispering sweet nothings to them in broken Japanese.

“You must be hungry, Hiro,” I whispered as Hiro whimpered. I stroked his hand and rubbed his tummy, but I was too small to offer him the comfort of being held in my arms. I hoped what I gave him was enough. “It’s okay. They’re a.... bit late today because Miyo wouldn’t stop….uh... pulling at her hair... again. I’m sure they’ll be here soon.” The longer the sentence, the harder I had to work, but immersion only went so far when the workers here barely talked to the kids individually.

I moved from cot to cot, offering what touch and language I could. It felt paltry. Like trying to fill a broken glass up with water. But it wasn’t just for them.

It was for me too.

I knew what lack of physical contact, affection, one on one attention and language could do to a child. The cognitive, physical, social and emotional effects were devastating and long lasting. A case study of Romanian orphanages after the Iron Curtain had been raised from my long forgotten and forever unfinished university degree remained clear in my mind. I had made sure I remembered it. _I was going to survive this fucking place._

I watched Natsumi walk in, looking harried, and fell silent, holding Chiyo’s tiny hand in mine. She was very small - probably premature - and had a tendency to lie on her left side in her cot. You could tell because her skull was flatter on one side than the other. I rolled Chiyo over onto her back, my tiny arms slipping through the cot bars and began stroking her head where the faintest wisps of black hair were growing. She began to feed the babies, in the same order she always did. I watched her darkly, as she barely even touched the kids beyond feeding them. Scarcely looked at them.

_No_ , I decided. I wasn’t just going to survive.

I was going to fucking _thrive._

* * *

"Kura, help me with the babies," said Hazuki, one of the frailer caregivers here at the orphanage. She needed my help to feed the infants these days, but she couldn't retire yet. I had heard her muttering about a dead shinobi for a son and dwindling money. I pitied her, yes. But I couldn't sympathise with her. I would never be able to sympathise with any of the workers here as long as I lived, I knew that for sure. I would die despising them from the bottom of my soul.  
  
I complied without speaking. She had, arguably, the easiest job in the place. Infants required more care, but were smaller, easier to manhandle into submission. The bigger kids got, the more the caregivers had trouble with them.  
  
I ran around after Hazuki, getting fresh cloth for nappies, fetching formula from the kitchen, untangling all the kids from the bed linen they twisted around themselves in their boredom. I even ended up feeding a couple of the kids, though I was still small for my age. Everyone in the orphanage was too small. It was hard to tell without seeing other normal kids around, but just seeing how tall the staff still seemed to me, I could tell. This place was already affecting us. We would always be smaller than everyone else. I just prayed that my brain wouldn't be too small in future. That would lead to severe cognitive dysfunction, and I needed my brain.  
  
It was all I had in this place.  
  
It was relaxing, in a way, feeding the kids. Hazuki was too deaf to hear the crying ones, so there was no shouting and reprimands. I could still hear that part of the orphanage, a few rooms down.  
  
Some of the babies wouldn't drink very much, and Hazuki didn't tend to stick around to make sure they did so. Maybe she was just numb to it. She knew as well as I did that the ones that died were the ones that started refusing nourishment. Maybe she thought it better to just let them go.  
  
After all, it only takes three days for a newborn to starve.

I tried, I really did. But soon I was mixing up names, and then I was calling the babies ‘sweetheart’ or ‘darling’, and then sometime in between my fourth and fifth year, I stopped talking at all.

I just stood next to their cribs and stroked their too-tiny hands in my own.

They stopped crying after a while, you see. They figured out no one was coming to help them.

I guess in some way, I was doing the same.

* * *

I wrote with clumsy fingers on a page that had been ripped out of one of the orphanage picture books.

Now, I feel the need to clarify - I didn’t rip it out. I just picked it up and hid it inside my T shirt once it had been ripped out by one of my fellow orphans. The pen had been lifted from a napping carer’s pocket, however. All the pens and pencils around here had been blunted and dulled or broken by the hordes of bored children that inhabit this place. Stealing it was a necessary evil.

The fact that the pen I lifted _happened_ to belong to Natsumi (who had once walloped me after she found me cutting my own hair with stolen scissors) … well, that little tidbit didn’t pass my lips.

Nothing did, these days.

Rapidly deteriorating ability to speak aside, I had decided to be the cliché.

What do you do when you get reborn against your will in the naruto verse? Well it’s simple, you write down everything important that you know. In English, or some other complex code. Fanfiction 101, that is.

For me - only ever a casual fan once past the age of fourteen - that wasn’t a whole lot. All I knew was everything turned out okay in the end (probably), and somehow Orochimaru never actually died properly - but my knowledge of post time-skip events was very spotty.

Who cares anyway. That’s what the main characters are for. What am I here for? No fucking clue, but a half completed social work degree with a minor in psychology had to count for something in the afterlife.

Thank god for that one nightmare of a psychology report. (That High Distinction was earned, goddamnit!) I remembered a whole lot about children in institutional care, what orphanages and places like it do to kids.

_The main issue: Lack of individual attention from caretakers, leading to emotional and physical neglect. The caretaker to child ratio is far too low for anyone of us to receive the attention we needed. Children are at best, ignored, or at worst, abused. Caretakers have little training, and all appear to come from lower class civilian families (insufficient pay? Undervalued work)._

_The resulting problems:_

_Increased developmental problems including but not limited to:_

_Deprivation Dwarfism: emotionally and psychologically deprived children are often appear smaller and younger than their healthy counterparts. Symptoms may include a voracious appetite coupled with a lack of weight gain, feeding difficulties in infancy, persistent sleep problems, short stature, delays in sexual maturation and fragile skeletal structures._

_Behavioural issues such as inattention, hyperactivity, delays in social, emotional development are common, and go unmanaged and untreated by caretakers._

_Improper development of social skills; significant deficiency in sensory perception including responses to and understanding facial expressions. Emotional reactivity is poor and non-verbal social cues often go undetected. This has negative impacts on both the child's social life as well as their academic development._

_Disorganised attachment: children lack a reliable adult figures and display indiscriminate friendly behaviour. Children may be easily lured away by strangers but may have trouble forming secure attachments to adults and caregivers later in life._

I stopped writing. The page was nearly full on both sides now - over the top of an illustration of the titular character Ranka, leaving home to become a rogue ninja after both of her parents died in a bandit attack.

Even the picture books were violent around here.

I didn’t know what I was going to do, in this world of violence and orphans, I didn’t have a place. I would be lucky if I managed to escape the orphanage without severe developmental delays - I knew I wasn’t going to be a genius ninja. The knowledge I had - about what this _place_ was doing to the forgotten children of Konoha, about the suffering and illness they would endure out of neglect and ignorance - I couldn’t just do nothing with it. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.

I folded the page up and slipped it under the waistband of my shorts. A reminder of things I had to do, changes I had to make, a plan that would one day be followed.

I wasn’t here to change the world or anything, but changing some kids’ lives?

That’d be worth it.

* * *

In the end, an opportunity presented itself. When I was around six years old, a stressed looking ninja (a chuunin, if I had to guess) came to give a talk on the academy and how to enter it. He was immediately swarmed by kids, everyone pulling at his clothes and asking him questions and clamouring for his attention. Me, and a couple of the other more standoffish kids watched from the end of the hall. I absently made my way over to Haru, who was methodically pulling hair out at the edges of an ever-growing bald spot on his scalp and held both his hands in mine to stop his fidgeting. He started rocking gently instead, but that was the best you could get out Haru most days. He didn’t talk very much. Neither did I, so we got on pretty well. Eventually we were all herded into the dining hall and sat at our tables and chairs. Me and Haru sat together, so I could keep better hold of his hands. I could see Takako opposite me raking her fingernails up and down her red and raw arms, but I had long ago accepted that I only had two hands. I couldn’t stop everyone’s self-destructive behaviour - in fact, I couldn’t really stop anyone’s, at the end of the day. Not even my own.

It wasn’t just a matter of not pulling out your hair, or biting your nails, or scratching your arms, or picking at old scabs - it was a matter of why. We were all bored. We were all lonely. We all felt hungry even when we ate and tired even when we slept. But where once the injustice of it all burned in me, now it merely smouldered. Waiting, praying, hoping, for someone or something to come and kindle the glow back into existence. For now, at least, I would only taste the acrid smoke at the back of my throat and try to remember what had been lost. What had been taken. Not to fall underneath like so many of my friends in this hellhole had (so young, so young, so fucking young). 

I snapped myself out of my depressive tangent. It didn’t do anyone any good, least of all me. Haru’s hands were still in mine, and his rocking had slowed, his attention was caught by the ninja (A real ninja! Some part of me was still in awe), and I followed his gaze.

“After you’ve completed the aptitude test, you may be accepted into the academy program.” The ninja had his arms behind his back and stood still and tall - no fidgeting or arm swinging like most nervous public speakers - but his voice was breathless and weak in places, so I figured he wasn’t particularly comfortable up there. Some part of me found comfort in it - even state-sanctioned killers are scared of public speaking. “Upon acceptance, you will be offered a weekly payment to be used for textbooks, supplies, training weapons and other essentials.”

A great celebratory cry went up around the orphanage kids, and I tightened my hands around Haru’s as I smiled despite myself. Shopping! Money! Choosing my own clothes for once! I couldn’t wait.

“You will need permission from your caretakers here in order to use it however -” some of the bolder, older kids jeered at this, but the ninja raised his weak voice and continued. I wondered how the poor guy got suckered into this.

“Permission forms will be provided to the orphanage following the results of the test.” His brown eyes flicked over to Natsumi who nodded at him in acknowledgment.

_Great._

_Guess I’ll be learning how to forge signatures in the near future._ I’d have to find more destroyed picture books to start practicing in. 

It was then that I realised that I was thinking as if the decision had already been made. That I would be a ninja. I would become a tool for this godforsaken village which had abandoned me here, with Haru, Takako, Hiro, Miyako (I had never seen her again god what had they _done_ to her) and countless others I had known and lost to one thing or another. Sometimes malice - but often, simple indifference. This place didn’t give a shit about us. No one seemed to.

And here it was – a way out, on a silver platter. Free education and a job thereafter. Every single one of us would have been crazy not to at least take the fucking test. Or maybe I was just crazy enough to take it.

What other option did I have? It was a dirty move. Of course, everyone here would take the test. Of course, we all wanted to be ninja. We had nowhere else to go.

Haru looked so excited next to me. I knew he would at least take the test. Someone would have to hold his hands, so he stopped scratching his arms. Someone would have to take care of the few orphan kids who got in. God knew no teacher would do it. 

I already knew the answer.

Of course, I would go. There was no other answer. There was no other option. I would pass the test – God, I hoped so at least - and I would go.

No one else would have me.


	2. Test

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I had little intention of becoming an orphan who no one would miss with excellent language skills, some notable smarts, a healthy body and an already activated chakra system. I would be asking for it at that rate. I had to ride the line - talented enough to be accepted into the academy, not quite talented enough to be snapped up by some kind of underground overlord of a semi-illegal military force or some cliché shit like that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i! have! no! self! control!
> 
> was gonna space these updates out more but like...... fuck that lmao.

Preparing for the aptitude test was difficult – given that I had no idea what was going to be on it. I attempted to practice my reading – possibly get a few kanji down – though I was pretty sure they’d teach us kanji while we were at the academy. Speaking Japanese was easy these days, after 5 years of being immersed in the language and a background of 6 years of Japanese education from a past life – though I rarely did talk, except to other orphan kids. Their language was often severely underdeveloped compared to mine, without the prior structure to help them learn that I had. Word games like [Shiritori](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiritori) were good ways to pass the time with other kids here though – since they were often too lethargic and depressed to play physical games all the time.

I read voraciously – moving on from picture books to harder, longer texts. Many of them were very old and out of date – half of me wanted to see if I could rifle up a copy of “The Tale of the Utterly Gutsy Shinobi”, but I was more focused on preserving the few intact books we had. I got the sense that the books we had were all donated – they covered such a broad, if outdated, selection of genres. I snatched up non-fiction texts, be they historical, medical, science – even literature analysis (though I barely understood those, I held a certain fondness for them still). The other kids tended to rip out the pages for making origami and drawing on. 

My mathematics skills were practically non-existent, and my only hope was that everyone else's maths skills were similarly poor in this age group. I knew how to count, add, subtract, multiply and divide. Mostly. Times-tables had been my enemy the last time I was a child and I didn't expect to be making friends with them anytime soon.

I felt energised, finally. I had a goal, something to work towards. I felt a similar energy in the other kids as well - with a few of them asking me to help them with their own preparations. I read a lot of books aloud to many a fellow kid. My voice trembled in the same way I had noted that poor ninja's voice had. My throat ached after mere minutes of talking, and I found myself whispering and murmuring in Haru's ears as I read to him - to save my voice. He was a sweetheart, often saving me food to bring to me when I was immersed in one of my books and missed meals. Eating the food at the orphanage gave no one joy - plenty of lukewarm rice, thin soup and and fish that was just a bit over the hill. Still, I knew I had to keep my body well if I was gonna do this ninja thing. I hadn't felt a lick of goddamn chakra yet - from myself or anyone else - but I supposed that would wait for the academy. I wasn't going to push myself into it, so young, god only knew what it might do to my chakra system. Patience was the name of the game. Besides, I had little intention of becoming an orphan who no one would miss with excellent language skills, some notable smarts, a healthy body and an already activated chakra system. I would be asking for it at that rate. I had to ride the line - talented enough to be accepted into the academy, not quite talented enough to be snapped up by some kind of underground overlord of a semi-illegal military force or some cliché shit like that.

Honestly though, I shouldn't have anything to worry about. I'm no genius ninja. Despite my efforts, I've still managed to suffer some deprivation dwarfism - I'm smaller than I should be, and not getting taller anytime soon. I had a suspicion that the kids that were recruited from the orphanage were the taller stronger ones which always seemed to disappear every now and then. I often hoped they had gotten adopted - because they were taller and stronger looking than the rest of us, and appearances matter, no matter how nice you're trying to be. How one looks will always be factored into every decision others make on your behalf. But still, if some of those tall and strong kids didn't end up going home with a new family, how would I know? I wouldn't. No one would. Even if they were missed by their friends, it was almost expected that they would go on to forget us, forget about this place to the best of their abilities. Any kid in their right mind would try to.

That's why I was here, I reminded myself. I would remember every single fucked up thing that happened to us here, burn it into my mind and soul and keep it with me forever. For the ones that would forget, for the ones who weren't here anymore, for the ones who turned away, the ones who couldn't talk about it. I'd taken upon myself the burden of remembrance, and I wasn't going to drop it anytime soon. The forgotten children of Konoha would be un-forgotten if I had my way. None of the sick bastards who put us through this would sleep soundly at night ever again if I had my way.

They were gonna fucking remember what they did to us if it was the last thing I did.

* * *

The day of the test, I woke up early. This was not unusual for me. I was often out of bed when I should be in it and in bed when I should be out of it. Distantly, I had noted that was a bad sign and possibly a symptom of all kinds of mental maladies, but that was old news. Still, it was barely dawn outside. I crept downstairs and cracked open one of the windows at the front of the building. It was one of the few windows that opened in the orphanage, probably for security or safety reasons. Or because all the other windows were just old and shitty. God only knew. I took a deep breath and looked across Konoha, craning my head at just the right angle so I could see the Hokage Mountain, three faces staring sternly back at me. I had my suspicions about where I was when I was younger - I had hoped, despite myself that I was in some rural area of Japan once upon a time - but after I was brought down to the lower floor for a bath, there was no denying it. I saw that dreaded mountain. There was no denying it, though I had denied it for many a day afterwards. I knew where I was. It was then that I abandoned my hopes of a life anything like the one I once had.

It sure was pretty out there though, in the dawn light, in the fragile stillness. I took a deep breath. Let it out. The test would be in about two hours from now - early in the morning, even by my standards.

_Some weird technique to psyche us out?_

I didn't know, but I was determined not to let it work. I would pass that test. It was the only way out I could allow myself. It was the quickest way to get respect, resources and maybe, maybe, maybe someone who would listen to me. Would hear what I had to say about the place I had grown up. The way I had been "raised". The things I had seen. The friends who disappeared into the night in silence.

It would probably get me in trouble, I allowed myself to realise at last. _Someone is going to want to shut me up if I start making noise about what happens to the orphans of a ninja village._ _It’s too close to probing at certain secrets certain very powerful people don’t want me exposing._

I could die doing this. Not many people would miss me – and those who did would be powerless to find me or help me.

In the dawn light, with the cool morning air sitting heavy in my too-small lungs, I truly thought about it. About losing the meagre place I had carved out for myself in this new universe. The kids I had tried to help, the babies I had cuddled and babbled with, little Haru who was so much better at reading than he used to be and those notes I had scribbled down for myself, those months (years?) ago. It was a tiny, pitiful place. Insignificant. If I did die, I doubted very few people would notice at all. Even fewer would mourn me, and fewer yet remember me.

Did I want that?

Well, in a past life, the idea might have been appealing to me if I had been off my meds for long enough. Today though, this beautiful morning in this ugly building in this ugly world, it all sounded so lonely, small and sad. To die once again, and fade into obscurity like I had once before.

I knew I didn’t want to die like that twice. I snorted, only half in humour. It would just be a bit embarrassing really - if I didn’t at least give changing the world a shot the second time around.

_To give up so easily… it’s not a very anime protagonist thing for me to do, was it?_

I wasn’t an anime protagonist (that was for sure), but if I could borrow the endless courage and willpower of one, maybe I could change something in this shitty world. If I was going to live a life that was a lie (and it was, it would always be a lie, I wasn’t Kura – and I never would be, really) it might as well be a goddamn entertaining one.

And if I was going to do this, I would see it through to the very end. Death would have to wait. 

So, I closed my eyes, and in the quiet of the morning, started reciting my times tables to the best of my abilities.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than fucking nothing.

* * *

I wasn’t sure what I had really expected from the aptitude test. Maybe something a bit longer? The test itself was really short - it looked to be only 3 pages long in total. Maybe I had been jaded by high school and then subsequently university, but I had expected something more along the lines of a tome. A pile of paper that looked like at least three trees had died for, only for a poor student to soak with tears and a lacklustre essay. But no, it was short.

_Intimidatingly short,_ I thought as I eyed the test paper I had yet to open. It implied the questions they had would be difficult enough to stump your average Konoha five-year-old. Which I wasn't, but I also suspected that only a fraction of us would be accepted into the academy, and even fewer would successfully graduate and make it onto a team. This was just the first hurdle of many to come. Still, for a two-hour long examination, the test paper was so short it was making me leery. I turned my attention to the exam proctor at the front of the dining room - repurposed as a temporary exam room. He was also obviously a ninja but given the nature of the task he had been given (making sure some five-year-old’s don't cheat on their exams for two hours), I figured he was in a clerical position of some sort. A very, very junior clerical position. He had brought with him a large clock, stored in a scroll. Everyone had gasped when he unsealed it in a cloud of smoke. I didn't know if it was mundane or miraculous to your general civilians of Konoha, but us sheltered orphans sure were bloody impressed. It was enough to make one question the wisdom of introducing such clearly _wack_ physics to children who had only just got a handle on object permanence and conservation of mass.

Then again, I questioned the wisdom of many of the child-rearing practices I had come in contact with so far in the orphanage. Like tying children to their cots to stop them scratching themselves raw or leaving bottles beside a young infant's head for them to feed themselves with rather than actually sitting them up.

Either way, it wasn't long before the wait was over, the clock started, and I flipped the booklet open with tremulous, tiny hands.

Question one, maths, question two, _significantly_ harder maths, question 3, short answer reading comprehension, question four, obviously aimed at assessing the malleability of the new child soldier candidates, question five, glory to the Hokage above all, blah blah blah, history question. I turned the page again; pretty sure I could answer most of the questions on the first two pages.

Oh. A personal statement of sorts.

_What skills, strengths and power do you have to offer the village as a ninja?_

So, CVs for babies pretty much. God. I’d probably have the most trouble with that one, given how shit I’d been at ‘selling myself’ at job interviews in a past life.  
  


I was kind of floored at how deceptively simple it was. Sure, weird question at the end there but most of the rest of it seemed along the lines of testing logic, general knowledge and attitudes towards the village as a whole. I wondered if they did secondary analysis on the test papers – like what the questions said they were actually assessed some other trait that was unknown to the test taker. I shook my head at myself. All the other kids in the room were already scribbling away with their pencils (they had been provided by the ninja and were so new and nice that I was going to _have_ to try to get more than one), and I needed to get started instead of ruminating about what the examiners _really_ wanted from us. This wasn’t the chuunin exams yet, it was unlikely that there was a big ‘trick’ to the whole exercise. I just had to answer to the best of my abilities and hope that it was enough.

Still put my hand up twice to ask for another pencil for the exam proctor – who was just uncomfortable enough with children to not question what the hell I’d done with the previous ones (I had shoved them in the waistband of my shorts, obviously).

When I took breaks between questions, I noticed him eying the spot I stowed them, and smirked in his direction. He looked away, so obviously socially awkward it was endearing. I giggled, momentarily distracted from the last question, then zipped it as Natsumi shot a harsh “shh!” in my direction.

She was no fun.

I finally drew my attention back to the final question. I had no idea what to write. Honesty was a no-go, as always.

“I’m broke, and I hate it here, and I want to be a ninja so I can finally command enough respect for people to listen to me when I say shit is messed up in the Konoha Orphanage.”

God, maybe the marker would be just amused enough by my brutal honesty and let me in the academy as a joke. I doubted it though. This aptitude test was basically a scholarship. You had to prove that you were _worth_ sponsoring into being a ninja, despite your background.

_Despite my background, huh…_

Maybe I was thinking about this the wrong way. Maybe I should tell them that they should accept me not _despite_ the fact I’m an orphan but _because_ of it. That it had made me, as an individual stronger. It was untrue, of course. Childhood trauma only sometimes has the result of a resilient kid, and that resilience often comes from the knowledge that you have a family, carer or friend who appreciated you even through all the bullshit. A ‘secure base’, they called it.

God, it had been a while since I thought of attachment theory. I should probably make some more notes about insecure forms of attachment and growing up in an orphanage, before I forgot.

Regardless, I had to play to the markers. I had to play to the “ninja must not show emotion” strong-warrior-who-needs-no-one trope.

The lies came easier to me than they had ever had when I was writing a CV. Maybe that’s what comes out of living a lie for 5 years straight. Throw over a thousand hours into a single pursuit, and you’re bound to get good at it at some point. It was just a matter of time and patience.

And if this new life had given me anything, it was patience.

_I’ve always been a pillar of support for the other children in the orphanage. The matrons are often busy, and we are left to our own devices more often than not. I have learned to be strong, to let others rely on me in order to help ease the burden of care on the matrons._

I took a deep breath, lies pouring out of my hand like a broken dam. Still, I continued, ignoring the dirty feeling it gave me.

_To take care of one’s self is a very important skill to learn in order to become an adult, but to be able to take responsibility for things other than yourself is the mark of a good adult. I am already strong enough to take care of things other than myself, despite my age. My background has made me a stronger more capable person and will make me a stronger more capable ninja as well._

_I am prepared to put my wants and needs aside for the good of others, and the good of the group – just as ninja are expected to serve the village, faithfully and fully. There is much of myself which I have to give, but I know what to keep to make sure I am in peak condition._

_This is specifically because of my background in the orphanage and is something that I daresay cannot be offered by other young ninja-hopefuls. Thank you for your time and consideration._

I stopped writing. Then, just to see if I could, I dropped the pencil I had been using under the table. Then I hid it as stealthily as I could and put up my hand to ask for a new one.

The ninja walked over, looking like he already knew where this was going. I mimed writing and looked at him expectantly with my palm outstretched, like I had twice before.

I was a little disappointed when the shy ninja finally found his voice to tell me that I had finished the paper so there should not be any need. I frowned at him, and then he gestured at the clock and said there was only a few minutes of time left, so there wasn’t any time for me to add anything to any of my questions.

_Damnit._

Oh well, I would have to be pleased with my three-good-pencil haul.

As the ninja I had sincerely bothered for the past two hours of test time called the end of exam time, a lot of the orphans groaned in shock or dismay. I looked on wryly as he realised that a lot of us were so uneducated, we could barely read a clock anyway – let alone calculate how much time we had remaining for an exam. It was so sickeningly naïve, that he brought the thing along anyway.

They really had no idea what it was like, being an orphan in Konoha. There was such ignorance, but I had to remind myself that it wasn’t all wilful ignorance. This ninja thoroughly trained in ninja arts he may have been – he was also just a naïve teenager. He was definitely under twenty. Younger than seventeen, certainly. The sort of age that feels mature and world-weary until the second you surpass it and realise you really didn’t know anything when you were seventeen. You were just certain that you had. It made me kind of nostalgic, in a strange way.

I wondered if he was looking at me and feeling nostalgic for his childhood too. Both of us, looking down at each-other from within the privacy of our own minds. Nostalgic for a past we could never touch again.

It never got old, _looking_ like a 5-year-old and _feeling_ like the ageless concept of depression.

I snorted at myself. God, if the ninja thing didn’t work out, I had a great future in stand-up comedy. Did they even have that here? Maybe it was a [rakugo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakugo) only zone here. Well, I guessed I’d just have to invent it, along with basically the entire concept of child psychology.

When the ninja guy collected my paper, I gave him a jaunty wave and grinned. He looked baffled.

“You know you can talk now, right? Test is over.”

I smiled, and nodded, but did not speak. Then, in a move that even surprised myself a little bit, I pulled out all three pencils I had stockpiled and winked at him, before squirrelling them away in my clothes again.

“For god’s sake…” He rubbed his forehead. “Look. Just keep them. I have heaps, and they’re certainly not the fanciest pencils around.”

I turned mock serious and crossed my heart, like I hadn’t been planning on fighting tooth and nail for them if he tried to get them back. I had guessed he wouldn’t, though. He looked too uncomfortable with boundaries and children to be able to do so. I cautiously pegged him as an only child in my head.

“Right, well, if you make it into the academy, maybe I can be your senpai or something. I have a feeling I’ll remember you.” He looked at me, in a way no one had looked at me since I came to this godforsaken place. Exasperated, but ultimately amused, and maybe, fond. It hit me in a way I didn’t know it would. It was the look of an indulgent, affectionate adult. Suddenly I felt small, lonely and five years old. Like the first day of primary school in that past life.

_I had cried after my parents left, like the world was ending. Fleeting but incredibly intense sorrow that colours a child’s early days, before you figure out what’s worth crying for._

I blinked and shook my head. The ninja left the conversation awkwardly - with a sheepish smile - to collect more papers. Haru collided with me, and immediately started whispering in my ear about what had been on the test and how he remembered some of his reading practice and could read the whole thing. He had picked up the habit from me, at some point. It became the way we communicated, somewhere between the weeks we used to prepare for the test together. I smiled and nodded as he spoke. Then I glanced at Himeko (a new hire, a lot of caretakers didn’t last long) and Natsumi. They weren’t looking this way, but I knew better than to let them see me speaking. It would provoke all sorts of accusations of disrespecting your elders, I had no doubt.

I think Haru didn’t like it very much, when I didn’t reply. I gave him a sad look and, pulled him up the stairs, away from their piercing eyes. It didn’t take much to get away from the caretakers. There was so few of them, and so many of us. Clamouring and fussing for attention, clinging to the legs of temporary carers, or shutting down and learning the art of not being seen, not being heard and not being there.

The helplessness that had engulfed me for so long – it had to stop. I wasn’t a child. I wasn’t a child like all these other kids were. Not really. Yet, here I was, acting like it was all too horrible to bear when everyone else here was bearing the same things. Like there was nothing to be done.

I was watching a house go up in flames, noting that I should get some water and put it out but just letting it happen. Or rather, I was sitting in that house, looking outside and seeing a nearby creek, and deciding to instead sit here and die.

All it had taken to make me feel real, feel seen again in a way that no matter how much they loved me, the other kids couldn’t make me feel, was a single look from a teenager I barely knew. Not even an adult - a _boy_ who I didn’t even know the _name_ of.

And I could be giving that, to everyone else here. All the unlucky kids in this hellhole, living in the muck of a system that didn’t even acknowledge the filth it created, they could be getting something from me.

I was, in fact, in a unique position.

  
Maybe that bullshit ninja baby CV was onto something. Maybe I needed to think about making changes to the lives of the orphans not despite of my background – but _because_ of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> notes abt this chapter - i hated writing that test section lmao i got to it and was like '...........how would a potential ninja child even be tested. who is naruto anyway. why am i doing this. accuracy?? in my naruto fanfic??????? its less likely than you think.' i can't reread that section without feeling my palpable frustration lmao
> 
> i was also on a jobhunt while writing this so like. all that CV shit in there is like... 2 real. i wrote this a year ago and it's still relevant.
> 
> also - our bothered chuunin friend is called Koji. he's a youngest sibling with no cousins, nieces, or nephews so has no idea how children work. i made him out of necessity and then accidentally projected my teenage awkwardness onto him so now hes my son.


	3. ORP

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, I thought. Guess the easiest place to start is today.
> 
> Thus, began the first part of my Orphanage-Reform-Preparation Plan.
> 
> I scratched my arm absently. It was a bit of a mouthful. I needed a catchy nickname to build morale (my own morale, obviously). Plan O? Operation Orphan? ORP?
> 
> I smiled a private smile to myself. ORP. God, it sounded awful. So, so bad – so bad that it had to be the right name.
> 
> ORP it is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so ummm i havent replied to any comments but like just know im here quietly losing my mind at the response i've gotten for this fic
> 
> also this is the last completed chapter i have from last years nanowrimo so the next update might take a while given that i'm currently drowning in uni work and after i'm done drowning in uni work i will then be enduring obligatory family get together shit so. like. 
> 
> if you don't hear from me for a while...........send good vibes to the southern hemisphere i guess.

None of us had heard anything after the test. It had been just over a week at this point, so I wasn’t really expecting anything – but the rest of the kids were noticeably worked up about getting the results. It was a common subject of pestering for us.

Haru, me, and many of the others had all asked more than once about the test results. Natsumi, Himeko, and Rina all ignored us with varying levels of ease. Natsumi was well practiced – she’d been here for a while after all, while Himeko seemed more hesitant to just outright refuse answers. Rina was on infant duty, and I didn’t see her much unless I was visiting the babies or helping feed them. I didn’t tend to do that a whole lot these days. I had bigger projects in my sights. Not necessarily more important, but bigger.

I had decided that I needed to start making field notes. Technically, they weren’t field notes, because I wasn’t a researcher in the field. I was a child in the place where I had grown up all my life. Still, it was better than calling it my sad diary or something equally depressing as that. So, my project was dubbed the field notes project. Naturally, blank paper – let alone note books – were not a readily available resource in the orphanage. Traveling into the village to scavenge (i.e. beg or steal) supplies would also be difficult – we weren’t allowed outside the orphanage borders. Whether it was for our safety, to keep track of a hundred something orphans or just because it was easier on the few staff members that worked here, I didn’t know. Regardless, escaping was out of the picture until I prepared more thoroughly. They did keep track of us, with mealtime headcounts being part of daily routine. Leaving our beds after lights out would be a feat, given I knew that the place was still staffed at night.

I shoved the vague plans for a several hour escape from the premises out of my mind. It could be considered more later. For now, the notes that I had made so far lived inside my pillowcase (and were carefully stowed away inside my clothes when laundry time came around). They were pretty safe there, and to everyone in the orphanage I imagined they would look more like the scribblings of a child than some secret code or language. Still, writing in English wouldn’t work for the field notes. I had to frame them as something I had produced during my childhood in the orphanage, possibly even using the actual documents themselves as evidence. A firsthand account of life in the Konoha Orphanage, in the form of a child’s diary. It had to look sincere, but also contain enough information to be a useful form of evidence for proposed reforms. So, project field notes needed to _look_ like a child’s journal, and it couldn’t _seem_ to be field notes. It couldn’t be all misery and recounts of torture, I would have to write about day to day life as well.

Did ninja keep journals? Surely _some_ of them did in their youth at least? Civilians should, right? Was everyone in this world too paranoid to trust their thoughts to a piece of paper, or was it considered a good technique for enhancing one’s memory? I really had no idea.

God. Here I was, trying to talk myself out of project field notes before it even got off the ground. Whether I used the notes as evidence or not, I would need to remember what happened here. The temptation, of course, would be to forget all the bad shit that went down in the orphanage the moment I got out of here.

I was sure that was what every other kid who got out of here did. To push everything out of their minds, compartmentalise and just cope with it. Just live with that monstrous upbringing you had. Go on with life as best you could, and just take it.

I wasn’t going to do that. I already knew that. I had three pencils. There weren’t really a whole lot of pencil sharpeners around, but I could always steal some scissors or a knife and sharpen them the old-fashioned way. That was all sorted. I had the tools, but now I needed somewhere to actually _write._ Somewhere that wasn’t just a loose page from a picture book. I sighed, walked over to the pile of textbooks I had been using to study for the test, and picked the one that was least useful to me.

It was one of the lit analysis ones. I felt my heart sink as I settled on it, but I knew that it would be the least useful of the lot if – _when_ – I went to the academy. Also, the text in this book was so fine print it would be easier to read if I wrote on top of it. I steeled myself and opened the book to the first page.

_This journal belongs to Kura of Konoha Orphanage_

_KEEP OUT._

There, that was sufficiently childish. I hoped.

My handwriting certainly looked the part – messy and much larger than that of an adult. Not that it was intentional. Writing with the hands and coordination of a small, developmentally delayed child was not the easiest thing in the world.

_Well_ , I thought. _Guess the easiest place to start is today._

Thus, began the first part of my Orphanage-Reform-Preparation Plan.

I scratched my arm absently. It was a bit of a mouthful. I needed a catchy nickname to build morale (my own morale, obviously). Plan O? Operation Orphan? ORP?

I smiled a private smile to myself. ORP. God, it sounded awful. So, so bad – so bad that it had to be the right name.

_ORP it is._

* * *

Part 2 of ORP (I suppressed some faint amusement at the name) involved the expansion of me and Haru’s reading group. Gradually at first – sometimes other kids asked to join in as well and I obliged – but soon it began to grow exponentially. The oldest kids in the orphanage were usually about 12 years of age – the age of independence was much younger in the world, it seemed - and didn’t seem eager to join a bunch of four to seven-year olds in learning how to read. I left them to their own devices. I couldn’t blame them, and I wasn’t sure I’d be much help with the content they did during the later years of academy or [shougakkou](https://nugalis.com/japanese/vocabulary/word/1257-shougakkou-elementary-school/) anyway. For now, the younger group of kids was fine. We all sat on the hard wood floor of the room I shared with Haru, Futaba, and Rei. All the futon where put away during the day, so we had plenty of floor space to lay out textbooks and sheets of homework. I ended up having to lend out my stock of pencils fairly frequently. One went missing. I began making plans to steal more stationary from the caretakers here.

I definitely wasn’t upset about it.

Not at all.

Though, I was guarding the last two with the envy of a dragon.

Over time, I stepped out of the leader-role I had in the earlier informal meetings, as other kids who were further along with their school content began to fill in the gaps in my cobbled together knowledge about this world. Geography, history, society, and culture – they all trumped my knowledge by miles. I was glad to have them. They were still kids, but it felt like I wasn’t alone. Our informal homework club ran every evening after dinner. I found as more and more kids joined in, the more time I had to do my own ‘homework’. It became the time I wrote in my ‘diary’ most frequently, and when I pursued my own reading in the second-hand books and retired library books that we received semi-frequently. It was the most fun and sociable I had felt in a long time. I hadn’t talked to an adult since I arrived in this world. My vow of silence had changed with alarming swiftness from a passive aggressive tactic to deal with the caretakers I hated so much into the only way I could relate to anyone over the age of fifteen. More and more, the words I loved and relied on so much left me when I opened my mouth to use my voice. I began to doubt whether my voice would actually come out if I spoke, if my vocal chords even worked anymore after the years of disuse. Whispers became my primary form of communication. Haru got used to repeating my explanations to the other kids in the group, so I could teach by proxy.

I frustrated my roommates sometimes, when I beckoned them closer to whisper in their ears instead of replying right away.

“Can’t you just tell me now? It’s so annoying to have to go over there so you can whisper it every time!” Futaba burst out one day, the first time she had ever shown annoyance with my selective mutism.

On that occasion, I had just rolled my eyes and approached her instead, but it wasn’t the only incident of that type that occurred after the founding of the homework club – after I started talking to kids other than Haru on a regular basis.

They weren’t the result of abject cruelty or anything, though I wasn’t blind to the fact that that sort of thing did happen in the orphanage. The most common motivation seemed to be just plain old frustration – it wasn’t anything personal, and I didn’t take it personally. They were just kids. They were just angry. It wasn’t anything to do with me as a person, they just didn’t like the extra work.

I guess that’s one of the sad realities about being a ‘different’ kid. It’s not really the difference they hate. Blondes don’t all hate brunets, after all. It’s the effort. The changes in their behaviour it necessitates, the discomfort it causes them personally. My mutism was not necessarily _demonised_ by them, but it _was_ an inconvenience. It wasn’t detestable to have to wait five extra seconds to get an answer for me, it was just _annoying_.

Well, it wasn’t a new feeling to me. In some senses, it was better than the tip-toeing of people who are so concerned about doing something that might reflect badly on _them_. More concerned about _seeming_ to be intolerant or offensive than actually responding to my needs and preferences. Who apologised with endless refrains of “Oh god, I’m such a bad person, I feel so bad!” to force you to reassure them that they are, in fact, a good person. People who were more concerned with themselves and not letting anyone think badly of them than actually being accommodating.

I preferred their simple, honest frustration to _that_. The kids who were going to get used to it would, and those who were going to be difficult about it wouldn’t. I didn’t see the point in using my voice to change the minds of a couple of ignorant children.

Other than that, the homework club was going well. We occasionally devolved into arguments over who was right about whatever factoid, or grammatical rule, or kanji – which I attempted to resolve with the copious flicking through of textbooks and pointing at pages that proved one party correct, rather than cyclical arguments.

The dreaded return of the “No, it’s not!” “Yes, it is!” form of intellectual debate was not particularly welcome. I ended up clapping my hands and waving a lot at people to break them up. Rei and Futaba – my roommates – close while they were, often argued like cats and dogs. I had a feeling they were actually blood related – siblings or cousins or fraternal twins. They looked very alike and got along so poorly it seemed to be the only explanation. On one memorable occasion me and Haru had walked in on the two literally tussling on the floor after an argument over who’s turn it was to put their futon near the left-hand window. On the bright side, Rei had finally lost that tooth he had been wiggling aggressively the past few weeks. Unfortunately, the loss of that tooth was accompanied by the temporary loss of vision in Futaba’s left eye – which became so swollen she couldn’t open it. The next day they were sitting together again like nothing ever happened. It was a little spooky. Haru seemed particularly put off by them after that.

He was a sensitive kid, though you would never know just looking at him. Things bothered him more than they seemed to. He was particularly jumpy and fidgety after that encounter. They got along better after the formation of the homework club.

I remembered whispering in his ear, “Sometimes people who care about each other a lot fight a lot. I think they both really care what the other one thinks but are too stubborn to change their minds.”

He seemed a bit less bothered after that.

It was good. I felt good, for one of the first times since I came into this life. Things felt like they were looking up, for once. I had a plan. I was following it. Time was flowing by so much easier than it once had.

But I still had one more part of ORP that I needed to implement before the academy.

* * *

Going back to the infant room had been something I was avoiding. Even now, as I stood in front of the door, I was stalling. I didn’t want to go in. Helping feed the kids was something I hadn’t done for a while.

I had convinced myself that the older kids were where I should focus my attention, that I didn’t need to do this anymore now I had Haru and Futaba and Rei – who had helped me ingratiate myself to the rest of the kids my age. Without them, I doubted I would have made any connections with the other kids at all. I was too strange – not the mutism thing, there were a few other kids who were non-verbal or selectively mute – I was just so clearly not really a child. They didn’t have a name for it, they didn’t know why, but they knew that there was something a little weird about me.

But that wasn’t true. I knew I hadn’t just focused my attention elsewhere by chance, or by some calculated move on the part of my stupid plan. I was scared.

I didn’t want to see them suffering. I didn’t want to count them, learn their names, touch their tiny, _tiny_ hands, and then watch as they vanished before my eyes. Watch as they slowly went missing or withered away to illnesses I couldn’t name.

Maybe they would just stop drinking, stop taking the bottle, stop putting on weight and waste away. “Failure to thrive”, they called that.

But it was so important that I did see it.

Because no one else was watching.

No one else who cared, anyway.

The great thing (if there are any) about living in an understaffed, underfunded orphanage is that it is very easy to get out of the sights of our caretakers. The infant room was one of the most frequently trafficked locations of the orphanage – for regular feeding – but it was definitely not under constant watch. It probably should have been, but if it was then I wouldn’t be here, taking notes about it. Here with my repurposed textbook and one of the two remaining pencils from the aptitude test, ready to disguise my research as the childish scribblings of an orphan who wanted to practice her writing, so she could be a ninja.

I would do my best.

_I’ve missed being around the babies, so I went into the baby room again for the first time in forever. It smells worse than I remember. Still, I like seeing the babies, so I think I’ll stay here for a little bit and write about them since I’m running out of things to tell my journal now. I’ll have to learn all the names again – a lot of them get adopted this early, I guess, because there’s always babies missing every few weeks or so. It was really hard to remember their names, but now I can write them down. We have nine babies right now, so there’s two spare cots. Their name cards have been erased so I don’t know who used to be there either. I’ll list all the new babies, so I can remember their names again._

  1. _Mori – a boy_
  2. _Adachi – a boy_
  3. _Chiyome – a girl_
  4. _Tomoe – a girl_
  5. _Anzu – a girl_
  6. _Yasuo – a boy_
  7. _Misao – a girl_
  8. _Reiji – a boy_
  9. _Tatsuo – a boy_



_I started from the cribs nearest the wall. Anzu and Mori both look pretty small compared to the rest, but I guess they might just be a bit younger than the others. I hope they both grow up big and strong. None of them are crying right now, but Reiji is making noises and wriggling around. I’m going to go talk and play with him first, then. I hope he cheers up, because he doesn’t sound very happy._

I close the textbook with a snap. I shoved it under my arm and started walking around the room, greeting each baby and trying to get to know them if they were awake. I tried to remember to put a face to a name and get used to their mannerisms and habits. I touched cheeks and rubbed tummies for the first time in at least a year. I would be back again soon, to note absences and differences in behaviour in the guise of my journal again. Every missing child, I was going to make a note of. What they looked like, what their name was, how they reacted to me – everything I could.

I could probably frame it as something I began to notice after I kept tabs on all the babies, like I had found out on accident but innocently assumed they were all getting adopted. Like all the information I was taking on them was so I could find them again one day, and see how they were doing. I would love to be able to see them all again – the babies I cooed at in the orphanage. I wasn’t sure what state I’d see them in, though. What had happened to them in the time that had gone by.

I expected I’d never see the babies from my very early childhood again - the one’s that vanished. They had gone somewhere I couldn’t follow, be that death or eternal servitude to the underbelly of Konoha. Me, and the rest of the kids at the orphanage, we were all too small, too weak to be taken. I would never be strong enough to be an ANBU member, of that I was sure. There was only so much training one can do within reason. Everybody had its absolute limit – and I suspected me and the other orphanage kids were a bit more limited than most of the kids who became ninja.

It would be interesting to finally get to the academy, to see how we all compared to the civilian and clan kids in terms of height, stamina, health, and intelligence. I was quite sure we were all developmentally delayed, but maybe the biology of this world was different. I mean, chakra was a thing, so that was a factor I didn’t know how to control for. Were there baseline average levels of chakra reserves by age group? Was chakra capacity determined more by genetic background or by training? Could the growth of a chakra system be stunted the same way the growth of a body could be? Were the two related?

I had no idea. None of the textbooks that made their way into the orphanage mentioned chakra in any meaningful way. In passing, yes, just as an unimportant contextual detail, but never in depth. None of the questions I had were even considered, let alone mentioned in the scant library that had been accumulated by the orphanage. Medical texts were nowhere to be seen in the collection of textbooks. I imagined that most of the textbooks we did have were from recent academy graduates, so that made sense in some capacity. In my memories – increasingly blurry though they were becoming – I didn’t recall an extensive medical training as part of academy curriculum. That sort of training was probably reserved for apprenticeships, hospital training programs and family training. I swallowed a feeling of bitterness at the reminder of how much of a handicap us orphanage kids were starting with.

It wasn’t worth getting angry over, I decided. I couldn’t change it right now. I stowed away all my frustration deep into my rib cage, were it sat – a small ember once more. I left the baby room, reciting what I knew about the kids so far under my breath that it was barely a whisper – _Adachi is older than the rest, and he has dark purple hair. Reiji is fussy, like he’s sick or in pain and his hair is a dark blonde. Anzu was deeply asleep, but it looks like she’s got a habit of rubbing her arms, because they look a little raw…_

It would have to be enough.

* * *

ORP - god, it was still a stupid name, but I refused to change it – was underway, and I was trying to keep it up as part of my routine. I often stood outside the infant room for minutes on end, breathing deeply and then forcing my trembling legs to walk me inside. Adachi vanished in between my visits, about a week ago. I prayed that he had gotten adopted – and wrote as much in my diary, but I wasn’t hopeful. He had been one of the bigger babies, stronger and a better eater _,_ and older than the rest too. Practically speaking, he was one of the more desirable of the bunch to certain underground war hawks.

It was hard – going in and not knowing who would still be there. Not knowing what happened to them. Not knowing what I could do about it.

That was a lie. I did know what I could do about it. Nothing now, but _something_ later. The thought propelled me forward, even after my hesitation. It kept me sane.

A week later, our academy entry results came in. It had been about a month since we had done the exam, and I was thankful for the time. It had spurred me into action.


	4. Opening Ceremony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the rush and clutter of breakfast, putting away futons, and getting dressed, it was time to leave for the academy. I was nervous (for general poorly adjusted orphan reasons), but also anxious to get a peek at who our classmates would be. It would be a great way to orient myself in the ‘timeline’. Maybe I could find some familiar faces, figure out what was happening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, im back
> 
> sending love and good vibes to everyone who commented - especially the person who literally just commented 'this hits different' 
> 
> made me laugh
> 
> doing nanowrimo with this fic again this year, despite also having several uni things due throughout november. no promises, but more updates should be on their way over november.
> 
> love you all

The exam results came one day, without fanfare. It was breakfast, and I was scoffing my food ([tamagokake rice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamago_kake_gohan), miso soup and some dried fish – a good feast today) along with every other orphan in my vicinity. No one got seconds, and the caretakers never ate alongside us. I suspected they either brought their own, superior food from home or went out to buy it fresh from the markets.

It was a day like any other, meaning Haru and I were swapping my dried fish for his miso soup when no one was looking and Futaba – who had finished her food already – was begging scraps off of Rei. Rei offered her a single rice grain, smirking. He got a smack in his face for his trouble.

So, you know. A regular morning with my orphan roomies.

Natsumi clapped her hands at the front of the room, and most of us dutifully quieted down. The ones who didn’t would be pulled aside by the other workers and excused from breakfast early.

“All right, everyone who took the academy aptitude exam two months ago meet back here after you’ve cleaned up your plates!” I exchanged a Look with Haru. Finally! I was buzzing in my seat, and a lot of the other kids who had taken the test were talking with renewed excitement and bouncing in place.

The boring routine of tromping to the kitchen and stacking our bowls, cutlery, and plates seemed to pass with unbearable slowness. I hopped from one foot to the other while we lined up to stack our dishes.

We poured into the dining room again, stumbling over each other to get a seat. I lost Futaba and Rei in the crowd, but me and Haru held each other’s hands tightly. We managed to scoot into a seat near the front together. I was pretty sure that Haru needed glasses, as he squinted when he was far away from Natsumi when she was talking to us as a group. I’d have rather had a spot in the back, away from scrutiny, but I made an exception this time. Haru had been really nervous about his results. He hadn’t said as much to me, but he was less tolerant of Futaba and Rei’s shenanigans than he usually was in recent days.

Our eyes turned to the front as Natsumi pulled out a scroll from inside her wide sleeves. She raised her voice over the chaos, and we quietened in anticipation. “If you hear your name, it means you passed! If you don’t, it means you failed! I’m not going to be repeating names so keep it down! Don’t scream if you got in, you don’t need to tell all of Konoha! Do you understand?”

“Hai!” everyone chorused. Natsumi was known as one of the stricter caretakers in the orphanage, and most of the kids feared her wrath. Even most of the troublemakers were playing it cool for the time being.

Natsumi cleared her throat loudly and flipped open the scroll. I scowled at her, I was pretty sure she was hamming it up and delaying it for the sake of her own self-importance. Haru smacked me lightly on the forehead and forcibly smoothed out my brow. I reached out and mussed up his hair in retaliation, all without taking my eyes off of Natsumi.

Finally, she started. “Kyoko, Hibiki, Katashi, Rei, Shinichi, Futaba…” 

I sought out Futaba and Rei in the crowd as they quickly performed one of their secret handshakes in celebration. I waved and gave them a cheesy grin, but only Rei saw, and waved with the hand that wasn’t currently engaged in the surprisingly complex handshake. _God_. _When did they start working on that?_ Haru and I caught each other’s eyes and he rolled them at me while I shook my head in exasperation. _Trouble twins._

“Tae, Haru, Masumi, Kura…” The rest of Natsumi’s words faded into the background of my mind, as Haru perked up next to me, green eyes gleaming. I let out a soundless, breathy laugh and hugged him tight, riding the wave of joy that had swelled in me like the ocean, as unquenchable as the sea. He flailed a little, taken aback, then squeezed me back. The inside of my chest was warm and prickly, but in a good way.

The rest of the name calling, and announcements followed in a blur, I watched as faces lit up and just as many fell at the realisation that they hadn’t passed. It wasn’t over. All orphans within a certain age range could keep taking the aptitude exam until they passed – even a ninja village had to acknowledge that kids are ready for formal schooling at different ages. In the end, about thirty of us were admitted to the academy, starting that spring.

Haru and I were approached by many of the kids who didn’t get in, asking to join the reading group – which already had about a dozen members. Of course, we let them in, and promised to help them study for the aptitude test next year. I wasn’t sure how many of them would stay the whole year – motivation wanes over time, after all – but it was also a way to get kids who didn’t usually talk to each other to connect.

Time slipped by from one week to the next. I wrote comprehensive notes on the comings and goings of the infant room, whispered corrections to homework and readings in the ears of many a fellow orphan and tried to keep my head above the water of depression and despair.

Friends helped, I realised. Haru – and to a lesser extent, Futaba and Rei – had probably saved my life by talking to me, even when I didn’t say much back. It was hard to connect with kids my age, especially when my heart fluttered between feeling to young and too old from moment to moment. One minute, Himeko was holding my forearms in her too-tight grip and scolding me for sneaking into the kitchens to sharpen my pencils with their knives and the next I was helping a second-year academy student with his reading like a seasoned parent. My perceived ‘mental age’ (if such a thing even existed, cognitive and emotional function cannot be described by a number, the same way that the sea cannot be measured with a ruler) flip-flopped with such unpredictability, I was often questioning how I should act.

Should I play dumb, for the sake of not causing a fuss, getting along with my peers and blending in? Or should I reveal my intelligence, and risk drawing unwanted attention and driving away the few friends I had made? 

It was a balancing act that I wasn’t sure I could continue for much longer. My silence around most people did not mean I didn’t know what to say – I just didn’t know if I _should_ say it.

These thoughts occupied my mind for longer than I would like to admit, but between all my rumination, tutoring and writing – orientation day and the academy in general finally came.

* * *

  
We were due at the Academy at 9 o' clock sharp, for the orientation and entrance ceremony. None of us had an alarm clock, but my roommates and I made an agreement that the first person up would wake up everyone else (if it was light outside). I sleep fitfully, waking multiple times. My dreams were bizarre – a strange mishmash of people I knew from my past life, my new friends from this one and characters that hadn’t even been born yet. The details slipped away from me as I awoke fully, and I became aware of the clammy sweat that clung to my neck, scalp and collar of my ratty shirt. _Yuck_. 

Still, as I scratched my itchy scalp, and looked outside the window, it was light on the horizon. It was morning, that much I could tell, probably something like 6 or 7 o’ clock. I threw the blankets off and braved the cold morning air. It was a bit early to wake everyone else up, and I hated having to do it due to my mutism. I would have to physically shake everyone awake – it was a horrible way to wake up. If I could put it off, I would.

Besides, it was orientation day. The first time my teachers and classmates would see me. It’s normal to want to look your best on a day like that, right?

I had a pair of scissors to track down.

* * *

By the time I tip-toed back into my room, Futaba was already kicking Rei awake, while Haru was sitting up and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. I was relieved. _They woke up by themselves, thank god._

Rei was the first to see me at the door. “Ah! You did it again! Kura did it again!”

Haru and Futaba’s eyes flicked towards me and I grinned as they took in my hair. It was shorter than I had ever cut it before, choppy and uneven, and I _loved_ it. Kura’s body was a fairly traditional Japanese beauty – inky black hair, oval face, almond shaped grey eyes – except for the positively punk-rock cut I gave it that morning.

Haru rolled his eyes, and Futaba bounced over to me to rub her hands all over my head – feeling out the new cut.

“It’s so spiky! All the regrowth is gone!” She cried, while I nodded happily under her rough hands. “I bet it’s even shorter than you did it before!”

I nodded again, unable to hold back a quiet laugh.

The room fell silent. I blinked open my eyes cautiously, to see Futaba – hands still tangled in my hair – gaping at me. Actually, Haru and Rei were also staring at me.

Oh.

I flushed from my toes to the tips of my ears and busied myself with putting away my futon and pulling out my second set of clothes from the closet. My chest was burning but letting out noise hadn’t hurt like it did usually. My throat hadn’t swelled up like usual.

I was still smiling, I realised. 

It was a good way to start the day.

After the rush and clutter of breakfast, putting away futons, and getting dressed, it was time to leave for the academy. I was nervous (for general poorly adjusted orphan reasons), but also anxious to get a peek at who our classmates would be. It would be a great way to orient myself in the ‘timeline’. Maybe I could find some familiar faces, figure out what was happening. I was pretty sure I was at least older than Naruto – as I would’ve seen him in the orphanage otherwise, given how I kept track of the new arrivals to the infant room. Naruto had been only a day old when he was orphaned, so he would have had to pass through the orphanages infant room before he was given his own place to live.

Me and Haru held hands on the way to the academy. Haru periodically squeezed my hand. _One squeeze for every five steps_ , I realised. Not that I was in any position to judge, I thought wryly as I once again cracked my hands and knuckles on my free hand.

Futaba and Rei were nowhere to be seen, I guessed that they had probably raced to the academy. I huffed out a smile at the thought.

I could feel the tell-tale tension in my chest of anxiety that just verged on panic. It was happening. I was going to the academy. I was going to be a ninja, get some prestige, and get people to listen to me.

I hoped I was, at least. Still, despite the nerves, my mind was quiet and focused. It reminded me of the feeling you got in the ten minutes before an important exam or speech – the certainty that even if you wanted to prepare more, even if you had notes to revise or material you should of covered, it was too late now. All there was to do was to face the music.

I kept my eyes on my feet, counting _one, two, three, four, five_ , and then waiting for Haru to squeeze my hand. Just like that, the ten-minute walk to the academy passed us both by.

As we arrived, I noticed there was a list posted on what I assumed was the academy noticeboard. Names, I realised as we drew closer. Haru squinted up at the list. Most of them had last names, I noted without surprise.

It wasn’t exactly unheard of for an orphan to have a last name, but unusual. We were either children of other orphans, children with unknown parents, or [social orphans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_orphan). A social orphan is a child who is abandoned for reasons other than the death of any potential guardians – a child who has parents that just chose not to care for a child. Often social orphans are abandoned due to not being ‘desirable’ – having a disability or being the wrong gender. I wasn’t sure about the stats in Konoha, but in my past life the majority of orphans were social orphans. I wondered what the numbers were here, but I almost didn’t want to know.

I had half a mind to scan the list of what I assumed was the names of all the academy attendees who had gotten in this year, but Haru was tugging me towards the gate and into the academy grounds proper, and I didn’t stop him. Sooner or later, I’d recognise someone. With anime hair being now a Real Thing, I would notice anyone who was a main character almost immediately.

_And, bingo,_ I thought faintly. Two silver heads of hair, one masked baby ninja, and one kind faced man in a green chuunin vest. There was no mistaking it. I was in the same generation as the jounin-sensei of Naruto. A more thorough scan of the various heads in the crowd rewarded me as I spotted a purple haired Anko, and two shiny black bowl cuts sporting green bodysuits.

Well. That cleared that up.

_Kyuubi attack in about 10 years then_ , I thought blankly.

I didn’t hear the opening speech given by the Third Hokage, and numbly took the envelope containing the required paperwork and list of necessary textbooks and equipment for the academy from a ninja in a vest. I barely noticed a loud boy in goggles arriving just as the opening ceremony finished, or his exchange with a doe-eyed girl with purple marks on her cheeks.

I just let Haru tug me home, to the orphanage.

**Author's Note:**

> General Sources (Content Warning: Child abuse, Child neglect, etc.):
> 
> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283795155_Impact_of_Institutionalisation_of_Orphaned_Children_on_Their_Wellbeing
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEzTFmiCeks
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd_nptd2q0M
> 
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK373333/
> 
> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/camh.12025
> 
> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6358200_The_impact_of_institutionalization_on_child_development


End file.
